Storage only shows “Other” + Fluctuating storage

Question

I have a late 2009 Mac, and my storage keeps depleting in front of my eyes. Despite disabling local snapshots on time machine, searching for numerous apps to figure out where the space is going, repairing disk utility (which displays invalid block count and then corrects it despite that it'll fluctuate again), and reinstalling Maverick/ restoring from a backup I have been left with my storage all becoming "other."

Along with that the storage is still fluctuating. At this point I'm thinking I should probably just wipe my Mac (what they finally told me after two hours at the apple store) because I can't figure out where this bug seems to be coming from and I've feverishly searched Google.

Does anyone have any ideas that might be able to help me, I'm truly desperate. Thorough instructions would be very helpful.

Answer 1

I wonder if your Spotlight index is corrupt or Spotlight is turned off for the volume, and thus classifying all of the files as "Other". Try rebuilding the Spotlight index.

You can tell the Finder List View to report the size of all of the folders; however, this will not show you things your user account can not see. To find what is using up your disk space with Admin access and good visualization, I prefer the elegant UI of DaisyDisk which you can download as a demo to try. Or you can use free GrandPerspective.

Answer 2

My brother had an identical problem, and deleting and re-building the Spotlight index solved it.

In fact, whenever you delete the index, the Storage graph shows everything as “Other”, so it seems the graph gets its information from there. Once the Spotlight index is rebuilt, the graph goes back to normal.

Answer 3

All you need to do is

1. Open Spotlight by pressing Command + Space.
2. Type in "Music".
3. Wait till the mac Re-indexes & you get few results (some music files).
4. Reopen "About this mac"

Solved ! Everything will be Classified properly.